Blow

Ted Demme gives more than a tip of the hat to Martin Scorsese in this high-octane rise-and-fall epic biography of George Jung, a small-time Boston dope dealer with an illicit entrepreneurial spirit who became the conduit through which the Medellin cartel built and monopolized the American cocaine trade in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Borrowing the narrative structure and the contagious kinetic energy of Scorsese's Goodfellas, Demme creates a dizzyingly seductive criminal whirlpool of money and drugs that sucks the audience in right along with Jung, who is played with cool but insatiable zeal by Johnny Depp in another of his engrossingly chameleonic performances. The uniformly great cast includes Penelope Cruz, Franka Potente, Ray Liotta, Rachel Griffiths and Paul Reubens. Recommended. (R. Blackwelder)